Kristi Noem is Annette Bosworth, only slightly more stable.
Back in 2013 and 2014, Annette Bosworth kept her family finances afloat by pretending to run for the United States Senate on a poorly executed pastiche of Tea Party tropes that she didn’t believe. Bosworth didn’t talk about real South Dakota issues; she just blew the dog whistles that brought the biggest cash response from vulnerable old folks out-of-state.
Kristi Noem is doing the same job on her donors. Steel your stomach and read this campaign fundraising letter received by a South Dakota reader last week. Pay attention to the specific details about South Dakota issues and the Governor’s specific legislative achievements:
I probably didn’t fool you: you knew going in there would be no real South Dakota details in this letter, and you didn’t find any. Noem doesn’t mention any bills passed or South Dakota laws changed. She doesn’t mention any work with South Dakota legislators or local leaders to build roads or promote specific education or economic development projects. She just screams Biden-Harris! and ANTIFA! and the firehose of radical policies and infringements! and lets fear and insurrectionism do the rest.
Noem must necessarily avoid specifics, lest she expose her hypocrisy. She ridicules the “blue-state, big-city politicians” going into “lockdown” with “no discernible difference in covid-19” (a lie, a lie, a dirty deadly lie) but now begging for “bailouts from Washington.” She does not mention, of course, that she’s let coronavirus run rampant and taken all sorts of federal bailouts for her budget and her brothers.
Beyond her talking-point hypocrisy, Noem makes clear that she’s thinking about running against Kamala Harris in 2024, not against challengers to her gubernatoriate here in South Dakota in 2022. Notice her selfish claim that “I do need to defend my name, my record, and my state against these radical left wing attacks.” After you wipe your snorted coffee from the part referring to her non-existent “record”, you’ll see the reference to “my state”—not our state, because that would suggest she’s thinking of and speaking to fellow South Dakotans. This entire letter is tuned to the wavelengths Annette Bosworth targeted for fundraising in 2013 and 2014: retirees out of state getting the heebie-jeebies from Fox News on their telescreens all day who are easily lured into giving their Social Security checks to some poor lady picked on by leftists for standing up to that dark-skinned person with the funny-sounding name in Washington.
This particular letter was received by a particularly vulnerable out-of-state elderly person. The recipient died of coronavirus last year. Noem’s target had been in a nursing home for two years before the pandemic. The recipient never lived in South Dakota. Noem sent her letter to an address used by a child of the recipient who managed the recipient’s affairs and now the recipient’s estate. That address usually only receives important, official documents pertaining to the recipient’s affairs; my correspondent reports that Noem’s letter is one of the only junk mailings to ever appear in that particular mailbox.
But Noem has other fish to fry. She may archly claim that all she’s thinking about is governing South Dakota, but this fundraising letter makes clear that, like Annette Bosworth, she’s thinking about nothing but reciting the talking points that will build her national brand and bank account on the banks of frightened, faraway donors.
Kristi Noem Lies Like A Trump
I hate money-grubbing politicians who prey on our vulnerable elderly. People with dementia don’t have the judgement or short-term memory to realize who they are giving money to, or how many times they have forked over their money.
I have personal experience with this. Before my brother got control of her finances, my mother got fleeced by the Thune political operation and anti-immigrant con men during her time with dementia. She didn’t write big checks, but she wrote hundreds of $20 checks out, because she couldn’t remember or figure out whether she had sent a check or not, so she sent them back $20 for every letter they sent. And these letters came every week or two. The desk drawers were full of them.
The letter Noem has put her name on was written with a particular intent: to scare older people with diminished capacity. It is well known that the elderly with dementia become anxious about change and things that are different than they are used to. The rhetoric in the letter may seem patently ridiculous to those of us with intact synapses, but what you see in that letter is a clear attempt to scare the elderly out of their money.
In reality, Noem is probably getting very little of this money. It’s going to feed the greed of her political consultants, who take a big cut out of every dollar sent to the politician. I assume Noem doesn’t realize she is being used in this way. Anyone with morals would not do this. In a sense, she is also a victim. She has been conned to put her name on a letter that hurts vulnerable elderly folks. But she can put an end to it, and she should do that immediately, and make an attempt to refund the money her political consultants are reaping through this con.
These elderly can’t defend themselves against such trickery. That’s why it’s up to you and me to never support any politician that puts their name on such shameless fleecing letters.
I remember 2020 like I remember Mama. Magats had control of the executive, judicial and half the legislative branches of government, but, according to Noem, liberals shut down the economy. No way, Jose..
She forgot to include the website, complete with little box that says you’ve agreed to donate $50.00 to her campaign – monthly / weekly – forever.
This letter makes me sick, and I have a pretty high threshold for being utterly disgusted. Wow. I am sad for humanity that the egos exist that lead to this letter, and I am even more sad that people will actually buy into this garbage.
I feel like sending 25 CENTS -just to ‘gum up’ the works. She’s not worth even that, tho, except to her ‘boy’ Lew and Ian Fury..
I know where I can get her an Antifa t shirt. Long or short sleeve in color( a rainbow) or black and white. I could find a Hoodie for her but that might be too much and another topic. Mines also in Celtic so it could be worn at a trumpie event, the rainbow might give me away but its so much fun wearing it on our walks past houses that still have trumpie signs. I’m such a proud boy when I wear it.
Poor pitiful America’s Governor, she is going about the busy business of raising funds for yet to be determined candidacy as the the GOP leader in FL hasn’t told what he wants her to do; primary out RINO Thune or be SD Governor until 2024. He will probably make the decision for her by next summer.
To burn time until the decision, she thinks “let’s campaign, chase cameras and headlines”, as America’s Governor learned in her queenie days it is fun to have people fuss over you. They even fuss or humor while you are dressed in camouflaged, like a tree, during a forest fire debriefing. That was a poor pitiful move. Like, stating “raking the forest prevents forest fires”, as mentioned by another Republican at a forest fire.
Those Republicans sure are something else or other or that.
As bare-assed and pathetic as Krist’s antics are, it wasn’t that long ago that a person quite similar to her was paired up with John McCain against Barack Obama. Then came the orange parody of a Sinclair Lewis character who was actually elected to the presidency.
It obviously is not beyond the realm of possibility that Kristi Noem will be elected to “higher” office. It will be then that we will arrive at the Peter Principle Moment.
Joe Biden is in the process of using the national treasury to buy votes for his agenda and, therefore, him. No one else in the world can shift money like Joe Biden can right now. People can say it’s dangerous; people can say it’s what we need. Both are probably right.
Joe Biden has shown himself throughout his public life to be a windvane rather than the wind. So have I, if I may flatter myself with the delusion that I had a “public” life.
Wow Bob. Good to know nobody robs like Joe.
Solid values for SD.
You should run for something! :D
Noem’s success as governor is unprecedented in SD.
She is very coachable.
Quit bashing Joe Biden. You are a bunch of whining babies who don’t want to see the rest of us live in the 21t century. Go smoke your pot and drink your Bud and let the rest of us live like we deserve. You republicans have made life harder for women, children, and minorities so just stay in the Dark Ages, but let the rest of us move on.
Noem’s only success is in promoting herself. She has not acted for the public good. She has undermined free speech. She has ignored economic development, letting her quest for South Dakota’s “Next Big Thing” languish without definition or action. She has ignored her own duties in favor of national campaigning, resulting in the failure of top-line items in her stated agenda (no civics education reform, total fumble on transgender athletes). All she’s doing is raising her profile and her campaign dollars. That’s success for her alone, not for South Dakota.
As a public servant, Noem is about as big a failure as Annette Bosworth. Her only success is in winning elections.
It’s too bad that we can’t have a law where our politicians only solicit donations from South Dakotans. I bet if the state voted on a law like that it’d win big.
Kind regards,
David
What would stop Noem, or any other pol, from campaigning anywhere and telling people while she cannot solicit campaign funds, they have the gawd given right to send her all the money they want?